Law enforcement on hunt for impaired drivers
By THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN
Officers from several law enforcement agencies will be out in force during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, cracking down on impaired and drunken drivers, the Kern Avoid DUI Campaign Task Force reported Friday in a news release.
The holiday enforcement push will include a DUI checkpoint that will operate from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. in an undisclosed location in greater Bakersfield.
And starting Friday and continuing through Sunday, extra roving patrols will be assigned by police in Bakersfield, Bear Valley Springs, Ridgecrest, Shafter and Taft.
Sheriff's deputies will staff extra DUI units in the unincorporated areas and will support the efforts of the various police departments.
To top it off, the California Highway Patrol will assign 80 percent of all available officers to the regions freeways and unincorporated roads continuing through midnight Sunday.
"Driving while drunk isn't worth the tremendous risk," said Shafter Police Chief Charlie Fivecoat, the coordinator for Kern Avoid.
In 2007, 34 percent of all drivers involved in traffic-related crashes during the July 4th holiday period had a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher, Fivecoat said.
Last year, five alcohol-related traffic injuries occurred in Kern County.
Most CommentedMost Popular
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
A settlement has been reached in radio talk show host Inga Barks' sexual harassment lawsuit against former co-host Scott Cox and American General Media.
Is Kern County, as has widely been reported, really the expulsion capital of California? That's the question posed Friday by state Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, to 50 or so Kern County educators, elementary and high school district administrators and community leaders.
Here's a bit of news that I didn't expect. The Kern County District Attorney's office has launched an investigation into whether the Board of Supervisors' practice of routinely placing the job performance of County Administrative Officer John Nilon on the "closed session" portion of its agenda is...
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
Young's Marketplace, an independent grocery store that's a Bakersfield institution, will close at the end of the week.
Bakersfield’s Faast Pharmacy is going out of business and will be acquired by the big chain CVS, it was confirmed Monday.
Amtrak is suing a Kern County truck driver for more than half a million dollars in connection with a 2010 train crash in Shafter that injured about 20 people.